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The alien invasion is a common theme in science fiction stories and film, in which extraterrestrials invade Earth either to exterminate and supplant human life, enslave it under a colonial system, to harvest humans for food, steal the planet's resources, or destroy the planet altogether. The invasion scenario has been used as an allegory for a protest against military hegemony and the societal ills of the time. H.G. Wells' novel ''The War of the Worlds'' extended the invasion literature that was already common when science fiction was first emerging as a genre. Prospects of invasion tended to vary with the state of current affairs, and current perceptions of threat. Alien invasion was a common metaphor in United States science fiction during the Cold War, illustrating the fears of foreign (e.g. Soviet Union) occupation and nuclear devastation of the American people. Examples of these stories include the short story ''The Liberation of Earth'' (1950) by William Tenn and the film ''The Invasion of the Body Snatchers'' (1956). In the invasion trope, fictional aliens contacting Earth tend to either observe (sometimes using experiments) or invade, rather than help the population of Earth acquire the capacity to participate in interplanetary affairs. There have been a few exceptions, such as the alien-initiated first contact that begins the 1951 film ''The Day the Earth Stood Still'', and the Vulcan-initiated first contact that concludes the 1996 film ''Star Trek: First Contact'' (although after a failed invasion by the Borg in the rest of the film). In both cases, aliens decide to visit Earth only after noticing that its inhabitants have reached a threshold level of technology: nuclear weapons combined with space travel in the first case, and faster-than-light travel using warp drive technology in the second. Technically, a human invasion of an alien species is also an alien invasion, as from the viewpoint of the aliens, humans are the aliens. Such stories are much rarer than aliens attacking humans stories. Examples include the 1989 video game ''Phantasy Star II'', the 2007 film ''Battle for Terra'', ''The Martian Chronicles'' by Ray Bradbury, the Imperium of Man in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, ''Invaders from Earth'' by Robert Silverberg, the 2009 movies ''Planet 51'' and ''Avatar'' and the 2011 movie ''Mars Needs Moms''. As well as being a subgenre of science fiction, these kinds of books can be considered a subgenre of invasion literature, which also includes fictional depictions of humans invaded by other humans (for example, a fictional invasion of England by a hostile France strongly influenced Wells' depiction of a Martian invasion). ==Origins== In 1898, H.G. Wells published ''The War of the Worlds'', depicting the invasion of Victorian England by Martians equipped with advanced weaponry. It is now seen as the seminal alien invasion story and Wells is credited with establishing several extraterrestrial themes which were later greatly expanded by science fiction writers in the 20th Century, including first contact and war between planets and their differing species. There were, however, stories of aliens and alien invasion prior to publication of ''The War of the Worlds''. In 1727, Jonathan Swift published ''Gulliver's Travels''. The tale included a race of beings similar but superior to humanity, who are obsessed with mathematics. They live on a four-and-one-half-miles-in-diameter floating island fortress called Laputa, and use its shadow to prevent sun and rain from reaching earthly nations over which it travels, ensuring they will pay tribute to the Laputians.〔Guthke, Karl S. (1990). The Last Frontier: Imagining Other Worlds from the Copernican Revolution to Modern Fiction. Translated by Helen Atkins. Cornell University Press. pp. 300-301. ISBN 0-8014-1680-9.〕 Voltaire's ''Micromégas'' (1752) includes two aliens, from Saturn and Sirius, who are of immense size and visit the Earth out of curiosity. Initially, they believe the planet is uninhabited, due to the difference in scale between them and human beings. When they discover the haughty Earth-centric views of Earth philosophers, they are very much amused by how important Earth beings think they are compared to actual titans such as themselves.〔Guthke, Karl S. (1990). The Last Frontier: Imagining Other Worlds from the Copernican Revolution to Modern Fiction. Translated by Helen Atkins. Cornell University Press. pp. 301-304. ISBN 0-8014-1680-9.〕 In 1892, Robert Potter, an Australian clergyman, published ''The Germ Growers'' in London. It describes a covert invasion by aliens who take on the appearance of human beings and attempt to develop a virulent disease to assist in their plans for global conquest. It was not widely read, and consequently Wells' vastly more successful novel is generally credited as the seminal alien invasion story.〔 Wells had already proposed another outcome for the alien invasion story in ''The War of the Worlds''. When the Narrator meets the artilleryman the second time, the artilleryman imagines a future where humanity, hiding underground in sewers and tunnels, conducts a guerrilla war, fighting against the Martians for generations to come, and eventually, after learning how to duplicate Martian weapon technology, destroys the invaders and takes back the Earth. Six weeks after publication of the novel, the ''Boston Post'' newspaper published another alien invasion story, an unauthorized sequel to ''The War of the Worlds'', which turned the tables on the invaders. ''Edison's Conquest of Mars'' was written by Garrett P. Serviss, a now little-remembered writer, who described the famous inventor Thomas Edison leading a counterattack against the invaders on their home soil. Though this is actually a sequel to ''Fighters from Mars'', a revised and unauthorised reprint of ''War of the Worlds'', they both were first printed in the ''Boston Post'' in 1898.〔''Edison’s Conquest of Mars'', "Forward" by Robert Godwin, Apogee Books 2005〕 ''The War of the Worlds'' was reprinted in the United States in 1927, before the Golden Age of science fiction, by Hugo Gernsback in ''Amazing Stories''. John W. Campbell, another key editor of the era, and periodic short story writer, published several alien invasion stories in the 1930s. Many well-known science fiction writers were to follow, including Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Clifford Simak, plus Robert A. Heinlein who wrote ''The Puppet Masters'' in 1953. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Alien invasion」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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